In the Shadow of Lies: An Oliver Wright WWII Mystery

An Oliver Wright WWII Mystery

by

Mary Adler

In the Shadow of Lies

Copyright © 2014 by Mary Adler

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact Dancing Dog Books.

Cover and Interior Design by Kerry Ellis

Published 2018. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address: Dancing Dog Books, P.O. Box 1308, Forestville, CA 95436

ISBN: 978-1-7320097-3-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930012

"Everyone sees what you appear to be,

few experience what you really are."

Machiavelli

For William, Benjamin, and Nicholas Ardine,

my father and his brothers, who went to war.

Two came home.

Author’s Note

It is difficult for me to think certain words found in this book, let alone express them. You will find them where they would have occurred in real life: in the dialogue and thoughts of characters whose actions are motivated by the ugliness of racism and prejudice.

The book is set in a real place and time. The characters are my invention, save Thurgood Marshall, an extraordinary and courageous attorney, and General DeWitt, a man who acted ruthlessly against the people the United States had labeled enemies.

THE CHARACTERS

The Families

The Flemings

Maude

Ellie, Joe, and Sammy—her children

The Wrights

Oliver—a homicide detective

Elizabeth—his wife

Charley, their son

Harley, their German Shepherd

Peter—Oliver’s brother, an Assistant District Attorney

Jennie—Peter’s wife

Zoe and Theo, their children

The Judge, Oliver’s father

The Fioris

Bennie—a farmer

Michael and Mia, his children

Jack—Bennie’s brother, a fisherman

The Slaters

Wade—a homicide detective

Cora (Lundgren)—his wife

Sandy—Wade’s uncle

The Buonarottis

Harry—District Attorney

Paola—his wife

Steve and Anna Maria, their children

Lucy Forgione—Harry’s aunt and owner of the Café Avellino

Isabella—Paola’s sister, Harry’s sister-in-law

Dom—Isabella’s husband, Harry’s brother-in-law

Cesare and Tomaso, Dom’s sons

The Hermits

Edna—the Wright’s housekeeper and Lucy Forgione’s friend

Nate, her son and Steve Buonarotti’s friend

The Community

Luca Respighi, an Italian Prisoner of War

Roan (Harmonica Man) and his dog, Emma

Andrew Semmel, Veterinarian

Doc Pritchard

Louis Carlton, owner of Carlton’s Blues Club

Hershey, Oliver’s Sergeant on Guam

Harmon, Oliver’s partner in Point Richmond

Jonah, a welder and Oliver’s friend

Regis Simmons

Paul Butler, a policeman

Ralph Robinson, owner of Ralph’s Restaurant

Auntie Josephine

Becky

Monica

Point Richmond, California

1941

1

Corvid Dreams

Ribbons of ebony crows streamed across the cobalt sky and disappeared into the centers of redwood trees, guiding me, it seemed, to the ridge where my friend Paul lived. A fitting escort. My wife had loved crows. She had told me more about their intelligence and complicated family structure than anyone needed to know, and I had become as fascinated by them as she was. For her last birthday—her last ever—I had written a poem about the flock settling for the night, rustling and murmuring as they closed their eyes and dreamed their corvid dreams. She had wanted me to write more poems about them. For a book she would illustrate. That wasn’t going to happen now.

The crows vectored in from all directions to the trees around Paul’s porch, perhaps a tribute to Elizabeth, perhaps not. He and I sat in rocking chairs and set about drinking the neck and shoulders off a bottle of bourbon, our private wake for her. Harley, my German shepherd, gnawed on a knuckle bone Paul had given him and kept us company.

"I thought the judge was going to stomp his foot and disappear like Rumpelstiltskin when he saw Harley. Oliver, one does not bring a dog to a funeral."

I smiled at his exaggeration of my father’s quasi-English accent. I had broken one of the unwritten societal rules that separated us from them—and had only made it worse when I dismissed the cemetery workers and reached for a shovel. My father had asked what I was doing in a stage whisper, trying not to be observed by his friends who were hanging on every word while appearing not to.

I simply answered, She’s my wife.

I had to swallow hard when Charley picked up a shovel and said, And my mother.

He and I filled in the grave slowly, not wanting to let her go. Harley lay as close to it as he could. His sorrow, the depth of loss in those dark eyes, broke my heart. I couldn’t explain to him why she was gone. I couldn’t explain it to myself or to Charley. Finally, we smoothed the dark earth, covered the mound with red sunflowers from Elizabeth’s garden—ones that had bloomed after they recovered her body. Harley had risen slowly and trailed us down the path, away from the windswept hill overlooking the bay.

Paul clicked the bottle against my glass—an invitation to leave the cemetery behind for a while. We talked about the last war, our war, and the Marine Corps’ plan to create a K-9 unit if we were drawn into the fighting in Europe. If Charles Lindbergh and his America First movement had their way, the United States would ignore England’s pleas for help. We agreed that we would rather fight in Europe again than watch the United States become more and more fascist.

We drank to absent friends, lamenting the lust for power that had sent them and other young men to their deaths. The sky deepened to purple, and a screech owl rattled and glided through the dusk, hunting for dinner along the edge of the dry meadow.

2

A Cooling Light

Maude Fleming leaned against her porch railing and breathed the hot bay smell lingering from the ridge trees.

She was tired of things ripening all at once and forcing her to spend the hot fall days canning. It would be even harder after Ellie started seventh grade next week. She would miss her daughter’s singing spirit, her chatter that made the work go faster. She had to find time to make up those plaid yard goods into a back-to-school dress for her. The child had surely earned it, cutting the beans and watching her brothers, when all she wanted was to finish The Wizard of Oz before she had to return it to the library. She would probably read under the covers with a flashlight all night, struggling to stay awake.

The children should be coming back soon. She had sent them with a picnic into the woods by the creek, where the boys could play in the trickle that was left of it and Ellie could read the book she had slipped into the dinner sack. Before bedtime, they would eat pudding and listen to the jar lids pop, Ellie and Joe jumping in their chairs as if the pings startled them, reducing Sammy to giggles.

She leaned on the post, half asleep and half dreaming about a summer kitchen where she could work outside and feel the afternoon winds blowing inland from the Golden Gate, although the breeze setting the glass chimes dancing felt more warm than cool.

A sudden clatter of crows unsettled her. They erupted into the sky, circled and gathered, then screamed away from the ridge. Something wasn’t right. She smelled smoke. Who would have a fire on a night like tonight?

She grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen and ran toward the woods.

The flaming cross exploded into hundreds of burning shards and ignited the long, thin stalks at the edge of the clearing. The fire crackled like a swarm of locusts as it gobbled through the grass, moving almost ten miles an hour and heating the air to more than a thousand degrees.

Ellie looked up at the ridge, at the crowd of panicked crows that filled the sky. Something had spooked them, maybe a mountain lion. The big cats stalked so silently, and Sammy was small enough to be easy pickings.

Let’s go, boys. Mom told us to get back before it got dark.

She heard a rumbling sound and looked around, uneasy. Behind her, the sky seemed foggy, blurred gray and white, like a low cloud. Then orange and yellow flickered through the gray, and a wave of flame rounded the hill and flowed like a river toward them.

She picked up Sammy and screamed at Joe to run. They were far from the safety of the trees. Too far. Fear whitened his face when he turned to help her.

No, run! Run as fast as you can, and don’t look back. Run!

He hesitated, and she screamed at him. Go. Get help!

She faltered when the world of Oz slid to the ground, then clutched Sammy tighter and ran. He clung to her and whimpered, a baby again. When she coughed, his grip loosened, and she almost dropped him. The heat scorched the backs of her legs as she stumbled through the smoke silently screaming for her mother. Her eyes smarted and burned, and she ran blindly for home.

Harley whined, a tentative, questioning sound, then ran off the porch, nose in the air. I peered into the gathering dark trying to figure out what was worrying him and the crows who had left the safety of the roost.

Listen. Paul held up a hand for silence. A low roar came from the hill, and a hot burst of wind carried the smell of burning grass. We said the terrorizing words at the same time: Wild fire.

He called the station, and I banged on the doors of his neighbors. One of them grabbed hoes for us, and we scrambled to clear a firebreak.

An anguished scream of no cut through the night. Harley took off and I dropped my hoe and tore after him.

A boy stumbled toward us, coughing and crying. A eucalyptus tree burst into flames and illuminated a woman running toward the fire. My heart sank when Harley raced after her. He closed the distance between them quickly and grabbed her dress in his mouth. She struck his neck and head again and again, but he held her until I picked her up and carried her away from the heat. She clawed at me and screamed and slapped at my face. Finally, neighbors surrounded her and dragged her back to the boy. She collapsed on the ground, gathered him in her arms and rocked back and forth.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the keening sound she made, calling her daughter’s name while we hunted for a way through the flames.

At last, the moon spilled a cooling light on the charred hill. Wisps of smoke snaked and danced like cold morning fog on a warm river, silence its dark companion.

As soon as we could, before we should have, we ran into the meadow and swept the hill with our flashlights, calling the girl’s name. When I saw a mound not far from the edge of the woods, I stopped dead, but the heat penetrating my boots forced me to pick up my feet, to go toward what I knew was the girl.

She might have made it on her own, but it looked as if she had carried her brother until the smoke and the heat overcame her. I didn’t think this child, as brave as she was, could have stayed and sheltered him if she had been alive when the flames reached them. At least, I hoped not.

I had to tell the others, but I couldn’t speak. They would have to wait, just for a minute.

3

Stick to Your Own Kind

The wily old fox had timed it perfectly: the rainy September day, the cemetery, the weeping mother huddled with her son under a black umbrella, a clichéd study in grays and blacks that evoked a memory of another coffin’s descent into the earth, a memory that stirred my guilt and made me so deeply tired that I slid into the thankless habit of trying to please my father.

When we returned from the Fleming children’s funeral, he summoned me to the study.

Not the dog, Oliver.

Harley, find Zoe. I sent the him off with a wave of my hand, and he bounded away, nose to the floor, on the trail of my niece.

My father motioned me to a chair.

It is fortuitous, Oliver, that circumstances have brought you back to Richmond.

Coming home to bury my wife was fortuitous? I had forgotten that my father had no more empathy than a hanging judge should have. I drew back in my chair, but I didn’t think he noticed.

"We’ve had a breakthrough on the fire that killed the Fleming children. It was a warning to a Negro professor at Berkeley who was buying a house in a white neighborhood. The Klan threw a brick through his window with a note advising him to stay where he belonged, or his children would be next."

Was his family hurt?

No, but he decided to move to a black neighborhood in Oakland.

Do you have any other evidence the Klan set the fire?

As a matter of fact, we do. Normally, people don’t hide their Klan affiliation. Hell, they marched up MacDonald Avenue on the Fourth of July. His lip curled in disgust. They’re proud of themselves, keeping America for Americans, and a lot of people sympathized with them. But now they’ve killed the children of a longtime Richmond family—white children—and we had a secret witness willing to talk about it.

Had?

He’s gone. He left town when the Klan threatened him.

Couldn’t have been much of a secret if the Klan found out about him. Who else knew?

My office, the police chief, and the prosecutor’s office. That’s all. His lips tightened. It had to be the police or Buonarotti’s office. My staff would never breach a confidence. He leaned across the desk. That’s where you come in.

Me?

This was a serious breach, Oliver. Serious enough for the police commissioner to ask me to convince you to move back to Richmond and join the police force. We know we can trust you to help clean out the corruption. I insisted they instate you at your present rank and salary.

He hadn’t changed one bit. Here’s what I want you to do with your life, and while you’re at it, you can be grateful. I was tempted, mainly because I still wasn’t ready to go home. My captain in Seattle had told me to take as much leave as I wanted, and I had told Maude Fleming I’d try to find out who had killed her children. The problem was the Klan. It could take months to find out anything about them, and I didn’t want to stay away that long.

I wish I could help, Judge, but I need to get back home.

He held up a hand.

Seattle can wait. You’ll only sit around feeling sorry for yourself.

"Feeling sorry for myself?" I threw up my hands and walked toward the door.

I need your help. Please.

How had those words slipped out of his mouth?

Look, I’d help if it made any sense at all, but I’m an outsider. Worse. My father is a judge and my brother is a prosecutor. Who in his right mind would let me in on a Klan conspiracy? I sat on the arm of the chair. I’m not the right person for this.

He reached for the whiskey decanter behind his desk and half-filled a crystal tumbler. It’s no secret you would prefer to have nothing to do with me and your brother. It wouldn’t be that hard for people to believe you had turned completely against us.

It beggared belief. In his mind, my not wanting to be a part of my family’s social circle equated to my being seen as corruptible.

He touched his lips with his handkerchief. There’s something else.

Of course, there was. The part that really mattered to him.

We think anyone who talked to the witness could be at risk.

For example?

Your brother.

Ah. I see.

I was twelve again, watching blood spatter the principal’s white shirt as he shook me, asking why I couldn’t be more like my brother. I knew Peter wouldn’t have risked getting dirty, let alone hurt, sticking up for the new kid outnumbered by bullies. Right then, with my head whipping back and forth, I had vowed to leave Richmond one day and make a life where being a Wright meant nothing.

Oliver, please. Do it for me. Do it for your mother.

His trump card. My mother had always wished Peter and I had been closer. If he were at risk, my father might be too. Peter wouldn’t know how to protect either of them. And then there was Maude. Maybe I could find some peace for her and make sure my brother and father were safe. Besides, it would be good to be closer to Charley for a while, at least until he settled in at Stanford.

I’ll give you some time— till the end of December, but then I’m leaving.

I regretted my promise as soon as he smiled.

The note had been a mistake. We now knew the cross burning hadn’t been a random attempt to terrorize Negroes or other non-Aryans but had a specific target—a particular professor buying a house in a particular area.

I talked to the neighbors around the house he had almost bought but came up empty. They said they didn’t know who had wanted the cross burned, but their smiles said they knew and were happy it had happened. Some said they didn’t want to live next door to a Negro—not always the term they used. They all said they had nothing against colored people, but they were better off sticking with their own kind: Look at the trouble that uppity teacher had already caused.

I made a map, noted who owned the houses, and tracked the man who collected from the people who rented. His involvement ended with the lawyer he gave the rental payments to. If I tackled the lawyer on my own, he’d clam up, claiming client confidentiality.

I gave the information to my father. He could decide whether he wanted Peter to pursue it.

4

To Shroud the Dead

The seventh of December. Three more weeks and I’d be home. I ran on the hard-packed sand below the high tide mark trying to tire my body and quiet my mind. Music seemed to float above the sound of the waves. When I rounded the point, I found the source. Radio broadcasts spilled from the gaping doors of cars parked along the highway. Men and women, some in church clothes, struggled through the dry sand toward the water.

A teenager shouted, Have you heard the news? The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor this morning. A sneak attack.

How bad is it? I wanted to ask how it could have happened, but he would have no more idea how than I did.

A man with swollen eyes shook his head and his voice broke. Bad. It happened early while most of the men were still sleeping.

I looked toward Hawaii and imagined the horror of the attack, men waking to shelling, to flames, to the screams of their shipmates. How many men had been murdered this morning? How many families were waiting to find out if their loved ones had survived?

I could feel the anger and hatred in the people around me. They had come to see for themselves whether Japs were landing on the beaches. Some carried weapons, ready to defend the coast, ready to avenge the dead at Pearl Harbor. Men on cliffs scanned the kelp beds, lifted binoculars to the sky, and listened for the sound of planes coming out of the sun.

But most of the people seemed to be mourning the men of the Pacific Fleet, California’s own. They lit candles by tide pools and cast flowers on the gunmetal swells. They pressed against the water’s edge, against the thousands of miles of uncaring ocean separating them from Honolulu. They wanted to help—to tend the wounded, to shroud the dead. This was as close as they could get. What was left of my heart went out to them.

The scent of the night flowed through the open door and filled my uncle’s cabin. The day had run long into the small hours of the morning, the precinct switchboard jammed with calls about Japanese planes over San Francisco and rumors of invasions. I had almost felt as if I belonged with my fellow cops as we patrolled the streets and reassured people who had come outside to seek the comfort of neighbors. I quieted their fears, told them they were safe, although I knew little more than they did.

Now I sat in the armchair that faced the bay, rested one hand on my sleeping dog, and let my breath find the rhythm of his chest. I closed my eyes and drifted with Billie Holiday. She flirted with death, invited it, caressed the lyrics that had been banned for romanticizing suicide. Strangely, Gloomy Sunday helped me survive.

The man who wrote it knew my pain. Knew the fear, the hope, the waiting. The loss. People said, I know how you feel, but they couldn’t see into my heart or into the hearts of the thousands of people who would wake in the morning remembering a future they would never have, haunted by the laughter of children who would never be.

I wished for sleep, for a moment of stillness in a world of constant motion. In country after country, troops massed along borders and refugees snaked along cratered roads. Earlier, as Harley and I ran on the beach, the war had seemed far away, a distant backdrop to my investigation into the police department. But now it would be our war, too, and once again Americans would die in Europe—and the Pacific.

What little chance I had to keep my promise to my father would vanish like the ships at Pearl, as witnesses and suspects left for the war. Not that he would understand. A man kept his word, war be damned.

I sighed, and Harley looked up, his eyebrows pinched together. I rubbed his worry away, easing my own as the smooth fur slid under my fingers. He stretched and headed for the door. I shrugged on my coat and followed him into the night.

5

My Giggling Assailant

Richmond—the whole country—was a mess. Men were still unaccounted for at Pearl Harbor. Some people had heard from their loved ones, but others waited with dwindling hope. People were terrified that the Japs were heading our way. For the past three days, we had been preparing for the follow-up attacks we publicly denied were coming.

Harley and I were on our way out of the station when I saw Wade Slater, a fellow detective, trying to get away from a man in overalls. A girl about my niece’s age held the man’s hand. I wasn’t about to see if Wade needed help. He had made it his business to make my life as unpleasant as possible. Men who had wanted to learn about fingerprinting suddenly lost interest when he showed up. I was sure he was the informant, that he fed information to his Uncle Sandy—which was the same as telling the Klan—but I would never be able to prove it.

I lit a cigarette and listened to his conversation. The man’s son was missing. No one had seen the boy since he had left a friend’s house the night of Pearl Harbor.

Wait. He’ll turn up. Wade took the man aside. He’s probably at a bar or getting laid.

The man pressed his lips together and bent toward the girl. He smoothed back her hair and said something I couldn’t hear. I looked at my watch. Time to give the judge a progress report. Again.

I had taken two steps onto my father’s porch when Harley woofed, and someone flew out of the dark and leaped onto my back. Harley spun around, biting at the shoes of my giggling assailant.

Zoe, I could have hurt you!

I got you that time, Uncle Oliver.

Oh yeah? I picked her up and threw her over my